Current thoughts and directions in museum practice from around the world,
as selected by Julian Bickersteth.

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Conservation according to IIC

So a second week of international conservation
conferences has just concluded with the IIC (International Institute for the
Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works) 2014 Biennial Congress in Hong
Kong wrapping up on Friday. And the first thing to comment on is that two solid
weeks of conferencing has in the end gone in a flash and not been as exhausting
as I thought it would be, helped by the very different nature of ICOM-CC and
IIC conferences and the different locations (Melbourne and Hong Kong). I noted that 24 conservators from around the world attended both.

450 conservators attended IIC with, by my reckoning,
about 50% of them Chinese speaking. That meant for a quality of dialogue I have
never been exposed to in terms of exploring east vs west approaches to
conservation (and for some occasional word mis-conversions by the
translators, the best of which unfortunately cannot be repeated online!).

Takeaways for me from the papers were:

the extent of the cross over between craft skills and
conservation in Chinese conservation projects.

the extraordinary richness of early Chinese textiles (11th Century and earlier) excavated from Tang, Han and Ming dynasty tombs and
the challenges of their conservation.

the challenges of climate change in subtropical
climates, where mould and increasing pest activity are requiring greater
vigilance in collection care.

A great social program with receptions organised every
night at respectively the Museum of Coastal Defence, the Heritage Museum, the
British Consulate and the Asia Society. The highlight was the conference dinner
on the Jumbo Floating Restaurant complete with a dotting the eyes on the lion
ceremony and face mask magicians. Like
all good conferences, the receptions are a key part of the show, as not only do
conservators like to drink (in moderation of course), but it is where
invariably I find the most useful networking is achieved.

However, the big news for IIC coming out of the
conference was twofold. Firstly, we managed through a panel session to get
agreement on the Environmental Guidelines we had drafted at the ICOM-CC
conference. These have now been formally
declared as a joint IIC / ICOM-CC position on environmental conditions and without a doubt moves us forward in this complex area. The next stage is to build on this
declaration to provide more specific details.

Secondly, and somewhat unexpectedly, IIC ended up signing
a MOU with the Palace Museum in Beijing to cooperate on a range of initiatives
including a training program. How this
came about was that the Director of the Palace Museum, Dr Jixiang Shan, was
invited to give the Forbes Prize lecture, which is the Congress' equivalent of the
key note address. So impressed was Dr
Shan by IIC and the congress that he delayed his flight back to Beijing to work
through with us how such a relationship would work.

Although it is very early days, fundamentally this means
that the good will and professional exchange that has been established with our
South East Asian colleagues over the last week now has a mechanism by which
this can be built upon.